Vijay Shekhar Sharma, CEO, One97 Communication, which owns PaytmBENGALURU: PaytmE-commerce, which runs online marketplace Paytm Mall, has added a part of its company shares to the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (Esop) of parent company One 97 Communication, according to documents available with the Registrar of Companies(RoC).

This will provide employees of One 97 Communication, holding unvested ESOPs in the company, “commensurate“ stock options in Paytm E-commerce as well.

ET had earlier reported that nearly 500 employees of One 97 Communication hold 4% stake in the company under the Esop programme.

All these employees will benefit from the development, said a source close to the development.

It is in negotiations with SoftBank to raise more than $1.4 billion in a round of fundraising in which One 97 Communication has been valued at over $7 billion.

Meanwhile, Paytm has shifted Saurabh Vashishtha, vice-president of business and product management; company president Bhushan Patil; and vice president Amit Bagaria to Paytm Mall, run by Paytm E-commerce.One 97 Communication founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma will continue as the CEO of Paytm Mall.

ET's queries on the filings sent to Paytm did not elicit a response till the time of going to press.

Paytm Mall relaunched its operations in online retail and offline-to-online riding on an investment of $200 million from Chinese internet firm Alibaba, its payments subsidiary Ant Financial, and SAIF Partners in March. The marketplace is working on QR code-based offline shopping and exclusive brand tie-ups to boost sales, similar to Tmall model pursued by Alibaba in China.

According to industry analysts, Paytm's ecommerce business ranks a distant fourth in terms of volume of packages, after Flipkart, Amazon and ShopClues.

With additional funding and imminent consolidation in the industry, Paytm could appear to be a strong contender in a “three-sided contest“, an industry analyst said on condition of anonymity.

Sachin Bansal, Binny Bansal, sales director Hari, accounts managers Sumit Anand and Sharauque among other employees have been named in the FIR registered on the basis of a complaint lodged by Naveen Kumar, owner of Indiranagar-based C-Store Company.